English – The real thing (1)

I will be leaving the Bangkok Post shortly after 25 years with the company. Before I go, I am going to give you some examples of the projects I have been working on.

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English – The real thing (1)

I will be leaving the Bangkok Post shortly after 25 years with the company. I will still be posting for a few more days and I am also going to give you some examples of the projects I have been working on. Here's one.

I have long been interested in helping learners of English to understand the spoken language native speakers (เจ้าของภาษา) use with each other.

Here is an example of a short natural-speed conversation in both American and British English. Just click on (tap with mobile) on the flags.

Be sure to listen before you read.

Natural English

Learn to pronounce any word in the dictionary in British English or American English. Learn to understand the English spoken by native speakers (เจ้าของภาษา) Buy here

The English you hear in the classroom is usually not the English you hear used by native English speakers in the real world.

Teachers, even teachers whose first language is English, tend to speak slowly and clearly to help their students understand. When native English speakers speak to each other, however they speak quickly and what they say may sound far from clear to those learning the language.

"English: the real thing" is designed to help you move from classroom English to real-world English. As you will see, the language is not difficult, but it is spoken at normal native-speaker speed. You don't have to speak that way – speaking slowly and clearly is fine for you – but you do need to understand what people are saying.

Stressing and destressing

The good news is that when you listen to English spoken at normal speed, you will likely hear the most important words in the sentence – the words that convey the key information. These words are stressed more than the other words.

The words you will likely not hear clearly are the so-called function words, words like "a," "and", "is", "she" and "for". These words are important for grammar, they hold the sentence together, but they do not give us a lot of new information.

Native speakers do not need function words to be spoken clearly because they already know the grammar. They listen instead largely for the content words, words like "department meeting", "explain" and "tomorrow".

With practice, you, too, will be able to listen for the content words and understand what is being said without having to have each word pronounced clearly.

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The five types of function words that we de-stress are:
articles (a, an, the)
conjunctions (and, but, so)
auxiliary verbs (can, am, was, have)
pronouns (she, they, one)
prepositions (to, for, with)

Often such words are dramatically shortened and they blend with other words in the sentence, eg., "Tell her to come" becomes "Teller ta come."